There is growing evidence of cross-language transfer in metalinguistic processes related to reading acquisition and development. In particular, phonological awareness is a requisite process that shares similarities across Spanish and English. Through explicit instruction and instructional design analyses, we propose principles to facilitate phonemic awareness development and transfer from Spanish to English for children at risk for early reading difficulties. In this article we (a) profile the early reading performance of English language learners, (b) highlight the role of phonemic awareness in learning to read in alphabetic languages, and (c) propose 4 instructional design principles to accelerate English language learners' acquisition and development of phonemic awareness. (Contains 3 figures and 4 tables.)